ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Thursday, Oct. 25 2007

Appeals to the base could sink Democrats' hopes for easy '08 wins
By Colleen Carroll Campbell

It seemed so inevitable last year. After the 2006 elections, pundits predicted
that Democrats would win the White House in 2008, just as they had swept both
houses of Congress. Hunger for change would send voters scurrying into the arms
of a Democratic nominee — any Democratic nominee — and the cultural concerns
that often tilt voters toward Republicans would matter no more.

That conventional wisdom has begun to unravel. The Democratic Congress that
promised change has accomplished little, and its 11 percent approval rating in
a recent Reuters/Zogby poll made President Bush's ratings look robust in
comparison. Democratic frontrunner Sen. Hillary Clinton is waging a well-funded
presidential campaign, but baggage from the last Clinton presidency has
complicated her effort to run as change-agent-in-chief. And a new Zogby poll
finds 50 percent of voters vowing never to cast a ballot for her.

Meanwhile, the Republican race that sputtered at its start has evolved into a
spirited battle for the soul of conservatism. Voter indecision has forced the
expanding slate of GOP frontrunners to define themselves more clearly in
relation to the principles of limited government and respect for traditional
values that have been crucial to Republican victories for nearly 30 years.

Those principles took center stage at last weekend's Values Voters Summit, at
which Republican candidates courted voters concerned about social issues, and
in Sunday's GOP debate, in which they compared credentials on everything from
reforming health care and curbing government waste to defending the unborn and
protecting traditional marriage from activist judges.

While Republican frontrunners were praising fatherhood, religious freedom and
judicial restraint, Clinton was making headlines for another sort of values
vote: her proposal to devote $1 million in taxpayer funds to a Woodstock
museum. The pet project of a Clinton campaign donor, the museum would
commemorate the 1969 orgy of sex, drugs, and rock-'n'-roll that epitomized '60s
excess.

Clinton's ill-conceived earmark provided Arizona Sen. John McCain with the best
line of the GOP debate, when he quipped that he had missed the "cultural and
pharmaceutical event" that was Woodstock because he was "tied up at the time."
It was a reminder both of his service as a naval officer and prisoner of war in
Vietnam and of Clinton's rap as a closet radical whose values are out of sync
with mainstream America.

Clinton shares that rap with a cadre of leading Democrats who seem bent on
perpetuating it, despite their party's ambitions for 2008. House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi recently drew fire for supporting the removal of God's name from Capitol
flag certificates and for defending an ad for a gay pride event that parodied
Da Vinci's "Last Supper" by replacing Jesus and his apostles with leather-clad
men and sex toys. Sens. Clinton and Barack Obama and former Sen. John Edwards
offer only anemic and apologetic explanations for their reluctance to endorse
gay marriage, but they recently waxed eloquent when asked about the value of
"King & King," a controversial fairy tale about gay princes that has been used
to teach Massachusetts second-graders about marriage. Edwards and Obama agreed
that they would want their children studying it in school. Clinton, Obama and
several other candidates also agreed in a July debate that, if a military draft
were reinstated, women must be drafted, too.

Such positions appeal to radical elements of the Democratic base, but they make
mainstream voters nervous. Unlike Republicans, who can side with their base
against same-sex marriage and partial-birth abortion and still remain in sync
with most American voters, Democrats face a wider chasm between the social
views of their base and the general electorate. And the further left they lean,
the less likely becomes their scenario of inevitable victory in 2008.

Colleen Carroll Campbell is an author, television host and St. Louis-based
fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Her website is
www.colleen-campbell.com.